


Blank Pages and Sad Melodies

by becky_rogerz



Category: Open Heart (Visual Novels), PlayChoices
Genre: Choices, Depression, F/M, Feelings, Introspection, Open Heart MC, Open Heart Second Year, Playchoices - Freeform, Sadness, missing moment, open heart, post trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:29:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27629576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/becky_rogerz/pseuds/becky_rogerz
Summary: Following the news of Edenbrook shutting down, Rain Harris had fallen apart. Since the accident, her life had become a disaster, a black void with no chance of survival. And between self-hatred and hard choices, writing a song could be her first step towards healing.Missing moment of chapter 18.
Relationships: Ethan Ramsey/Main Character (Open Heart)
Kudos: 3





	Blank Pages and Sad Melodies

The page of the notebook was still blank.

Discouraged, Rain snorted, dropped her pen on the ground and clung desperately to her guitar. An almost violent embrace, the apparent support that prevented her from falling into the darkness that was consuming her.

She was tired of everything.

Tired of feeling so powerless, tired of being in that state of perpetual unhappiness; a monster with sharp claws, clenched around her throat in a suffocating grasp. Every breath was torture, a stab wound to the lungs.

She was tired of being sick, of feeling that sharp and unbearable pain; a deadly shadow that had no intention of letting her go.

She couldn’t take it anymore.

A frustrated growl, a tear on her cheek.

There was a time when writing had been her only way of exorcising sadness.

Every time she felt on the verge of bursting, she’d locked herself in her room, pulled out her faithful notebook that her father had given her - a yellowed-out journal he found in a stall in Stratford-Upon-Avon, during one of his annual pilgrimages to Shakespeare’s hometown- and accompanied by the sound of the guitar, Rain had always managed to transform all the emotions she had bottled inside herself into songs.

Her thoughts used to gush uncontrollably from her mind, flowing undeterred through her arm until they poured on paper. Words merged with those dark melodies in a cathartic tangle; her cure for all evil.

Writing had always given her freedom.

It was a demanding, painful process; a therapy difficult to deal with, the terror of looking inside and analysing oneself. Nothing was harder than unravelling the lies of one’s mind.

Yet, releasing her feelings and making them concrete through ink and music, had always helped her to get better.

But in that moment her brain was empty, her words were mute.

And the page was still blank.

Rain placed her chin on the guitar’s body; her head leaned on its neck and her gaze rested on the firmament.

Around her, Boston shone in the night; stars fused together with the lights of the buildings, an endless dance in the dark sky. Rain had always liked to contemplate the city. With her eyes fixed on the horizon - the point where Boston and the sky joined- she’d slipped into that little glimmer of the universe; a place where all her problems seemed to subside in the face of infinity’s vastness.

For that reason, that evening she had decided to take a break: with her guitar and her notebook on hand, she had hidden in a corner of the rooftop of her building, letting the distant noises of the city keep her company in her solitude.

The hope that the night might inspire her to create something.

A broken wave on the shore.

This was the most terrible effect of pain: the sense of emptiness. A void so big that it hid whatever feeling Rain was having. And this inability to shape what she was feeling, blocked her. She needed to scream, to vent. But letters whirled among themselves in a chaotic vortex, too confused to create words endowed with a complete meaning.

And the scream died, suffocated in her throat.

It was so devastating.

It had never happened to her before: for better or for worse, Rain had always found the strength to express her emotions. It had been this what allowed her to be herself; always so irritatingly optimistic, cheerful and friendly. But then the accident happened, that fateful day that had changed her for good. From that moment on, a cloud had obscured her world, depriving it from its colours. And in the midst of that darkness, Rain had lost herself.

Not being able to be happy was the first symptom.

At first, Rain hadn’t noticed it: with all her energies focused on finding a way to save Edenbrook, she didn’t realize what was happening inside her. Danny and Bobby’s death had forced her to ignore her pain; the belief that if the hospital had survived, her friends would have continued living in its hallways. A stupid, banal idea, but back then it had been the only way not to cancel herself out in the face of the terror of having seen the face of death.

And although some happy moments had led her to believe that she had managed to overcome the trauma, the moments of loneliness had brought with them an asphyxiating and desperate anxiety. The anxiety of the future and the uncertainty bound to it, the anxiety of failure. And overwhelmed by that fear, Rain had realized that those happy instants were just a short intermission between her pain and her guilt.

Because that was what was slowly eating away her mind and all her thoughts, that toxic poison that had turned her into a different person. The more time passed, the more Rain had understood that none of the emotions she showed to others were sincere. She had become an actress: the brilliant doctor and the perfect friend were her main roles, fake performances on the stage of her life.

And guilt was the director of that sad show.

Rain knew it, she had always known it: it had been her fault since the very beginning.  
It had been her the one who forced the Diagnostic Team to treat wealthy patients to make the hospital earn more money, she had convinced Senator Farrugia to go to Edenbrook. The events that had taken Danny and Bobby’s lives; two ghosts that would haunt her until the end of her days.  
She had been too stubborn, blinded by her own arrogance. She really believed that she had been able to find the solution to all the problems; she, a young doctor who was still in her second year of Residency. 

How could she have been so stubborn? The tenacity to fight until her last breath just to follow her ideals, to help those who do not have any means to survive.

Her greatest wish, the dream she’d had since she was a child. The passion that had pushed her to become a doctor; that impetus that had accompanied her between nervous crises and satisfactions, sleepless nights and days spent between books. This had always been her destiny: bring justice into an unfair system. Giving smiles and hopes where hope seemed to have disappeared forever.

And Rain had always been willing to do anything to make this dream come true.

She had devoted her life to study, she had worked hard to earn a scholarship to one of the best colleges in the country, she had cried and suffered in front of the greatest difficulties; but with her goal well-focused in mind, she had always stood up more determined than before.  
And it was her determination that drove her to keep on fighting for the hospital, even at the cost of making uncomfortable compromises.

Compromises that caused the deaths of two innocent people and nearly killed her and Rafael.

For this reason, Rain had chosen to devote herself solely and exclusively to the difficulties of her friends. Helping Rafael build a new life, finding a solution to mitigate Jackie’s guilt, helping Bryce with his sister, staying by Ethan’s side as he tried to settle the things with his mother... Those were her fines to atone for the evil she had inflicted. Abnegating herself and bringing serenity into the lives of those she cared about.

The belief that by doing so, she would be able to make up for her mistakes and forgive herself for what had happened.

Rain placed the guitar on her lap; her eyes closed, and her fingers moving expertly on the strings of the instrument. A gentle melody soared in the air, a cry of melancholy notes.

And then there was Esme, another crack on the vase.

Esme with her stubbornness, Esme with her enigmatic answers, Esme with her mistake that had cost the hospital millions of dollars. Esme who had led Rain to her defeat, decreeing the end of Edenbrook.

Another one of Rain’s faults.

If only she had been more present, if only she had supervised her intern’s work more closely, if only she had been a better role model. Assumptions that had not stopped torturing her since the day Esme was accused of killing Levi; doubts that had crept into her mind and had planted their poisonous roots in her brain, fuelling Rain’s anger towards herself.

Edenbrook’s closing had been the last blow, the last crack that had destroyed the only certainty left inside her. His life was shattered, pieces of glass reflecting her failures.

She had lost.

She couldn’t delay the inevitable.

It was a cruel irony that Rain had started her second year full of expectations and hopes: the prospect of being the youngest member of the Diagnostic Team and having achieved one of the most important milestones of her career so early, the personal satisfaction of had been the best intern and the naive feeling of being able to start making a real difference in helping her patients.  
Illusions that now were just painful memories.

And now that it was only a couple of months before Edenbrook actually shut down, Rain was feeling exhausted. She wasn’t ready to face even that agonizing unknown that was waiting for her.

What would have become of her after all that was over? Rain no longer had a plan to follow, she didn’t know what to do or where to go. She was lost in a future that was yet to come.

The solution to that problem had been simple: armed with willpower, she had thrown herself headlong into work; her mind too busy treating as many patients as possible to think about the uncertainty of the future. She had not stopped dedicating herself to them, joking and listening to anyone who needed her; carrying on her performance as a friendly doctor so as not to worry anyone.

In doing so, she had also endeavoured to maintain a cheerful and positive attitude with her friends; pretending that everything was going well to encourage them, to give them an ounce of optimism. Because no one deserved what they were going through - broken dreams and plans gone to waste - and Rain, believing herself to be the culprit, felt compelled to give them the strength to go on.

Although weeks had passed amid eighteen-hour shifts, juggling between the hospital and the free clinic, in a never-ending dance of pirouettes and twirls between the corridors, where the faces of the many patients had blend together with like the characters of a painting by Munch, Rain had managed to uphold that facade; the semblance that her old self was still among her friends.

Only one person managed not to be fooled by that fiction.

_Ethan_.

Rain opened her eyes and looked up to the sky again, her hands were moving freely on the guitar.

The moon shone far away; a small silvery slice between the skyscrapers of the city.

One sigh.

A new tune.

This time Rain sang a song; her voice - so warm and sweet- came out uncertain, trembling notes that were trying to accompany those of the guitar.

_Oh today I'm just a drop of water  
And I'm running down a mountainside  
Come tomorrow I'll be in the ocean  
I'll be rising with the morning tide_

As the words floated through the music, rising in the air and fading into the night, Rain couldn’t help but think of him.

About those intelligent, deep eyes, blue as the clear sky.

About his smile, a rare vision capable of gathering storms and making the stars collide.

About the sound of his laugh, the most beautiful song Rain had ever heard.

The only spark of happiness in all that sadness.

Every time Ethan walked into the same room as her, it was like the sun appeared for the first time. And with the light he carried, the darkness within Rain dissipated, easing the pain and melting the ice around her heart.

Ethan had always been her steady point; her North Star on the blackest night.

Her lifeline.

Rain still remembered the relief she had felt when she found him in the hospital cafeteria after receiving the news of Mrs Martinez’s death. She had sat in front of him and after a first joke to relieve the tension, she had told him everything. The plan she had devised to help her, how she managed to get the experimental cure and so - under his attentive and penetrating gaze - Rain had admitted her guilt. A confession that could have constituted a great risk, the potential pass that could have led her to a suspension.

But Ethan had listened to the whole story in silence, without judging her. And when he had comforted her, Rain had the impression that the weight of her actions had become more tolerable. And even after the incident, were the moments with Ethan that had made her desperation easier to bear.

By a twist of fate, her life had started to fall apart after the attack, but her relationship with Ethan had become everything she had ever wanted.

Even though it had initially remained a secret between the two of them, Rain had fed on those happy moments. Being able to be with him without thinking about the consequences, without matters of life or death to cloud the moments spent together.

Eyes chasing each other, exchanged smiles.

Their hands searching, pursuing, finding and grasping.

Their stolen, furious, messy, insatiable kisses.

The marks on their skins, emblem of their mutual belonging.

A bond sealed by the kiss Ethan gave her in front of the entire hospital during the gala. A joy that Rain had been afraid of not being capable to feel anymore.

And for these reasons, Rain decided to take a break from whatever was happening between them.

Between the hospital shutting down and those masochistic thoughts that had become too untenable to appease, Rain had come to the conclusion that her only priority should have been her job. She had to give her body and soul, she had to focus on her patients.

The thing with Ethan was just something else to think about, something else that Rain could have ruined the same way she had ruined everything else.

And she was too unstable, angry, sad and broken to make it work. The awareness that if she had shattered what there was between them, that if she made Ethan suffer, she would have never been at peace with herself. She would have never found the forgiveness she was craving so badly.

Ethan was too important to her, and the only way to protect him was to keep him away from her own self-destruction.

And so, with her heart broken and a courage she didn’t believe she had, she told him that awful truth. It had happened a couple of weeks before: without having the strength to think about it twice, she had shown up in his office and threw up the terrible decision; her eyes low and the firmness of her words betrayed by the trembling of her voice. He had let her talk without interrupting, and then, after the end of that pathetic monologue, Ethan had watched her for a long time, in silence. Rain had done everything not to look back at him, knowing that if she did, his eyes would have exposed her lies, breaking her.

"Is that really what you want?" he had asked her; the tone of his voice so sweet that made her quiver.

Rain had ignored the knot in her throat, her fingers closed in two fists; nails pressed firmly against her palms to prevent tears from coming out.

"No," she had answered resolutely, "but I need time to find a way to learn how to live with myself again."

Ethan had nodded, took off his glasses and then passed a hand over his face; the exhaustion of that wearing period was visible in every feature of his face.

"I get it," he had said, "but Rain, you don’t have to do this by yourself. The trauma you experienced is not to be taken lightly, it’s impossible to overcome it without help."

Ethan’s eyes had found those of her, and without giving her time to reply, he had risen from his chair and approached her; his hand placed affectionately on her arm. His touch, so gentle and attentive, had been enough to make Rain speechless, who powerlessly had looked at him without saying a word. Ethan’s imposing stature towered over her, so thin and fragile in comparison.

"You’re one of the strongest, smartest people I know, but you don’t have to carry this burden alone. Don’t hurt yourself like this."

A single tear had escaped Rain’s eyes, causing the fake armour she was wearing to hide her true feelings to collapse. Ethan had wiped her cheek with his thumb, a tender caress.

"Be kind to yourself, Rain" he had whispered; the affection he felt for her visible in his softened eyes, “none of everything that happened was your fault."

And against all her will, against all her efforts to remain impassive, Rain had burst into tears; helpless and exhausted by the weight of those words. She’d give anything to believe it.

Ethan had embraced her, holding her close until the end of her crying. And she had accepted that gesture, clinging with all her might to his white coat; the attempt to not sink into that despair.

The song was over.

Rain gave one last look at the moon, now hidden by a black cloud. It was too late, the need to sleep was weakening her already tired limbs.

Ethan was right: she needed help. She, of all people, must have known that she couldn’t start a healing process without an effective treatment. And the music was no longer a proper painkiller.

The night breeze wrapped her in a sharp embrace, words vibrated in the wind.

_Be nice to yourself, Rain_.

In that moment, Rain noticed that her notebook was still open beside her; the blank pages were burning, looking at her with a firm insistence.

A spark crackled between her fingers; the warmth of a new thought formed in her mind.

Unsure, Rain grazed the guitar strings with her hands; the flicker of an idea turned into the sound of a note.

Maybe music was no longer enough to make her feel good, but it could still be the first step into finding the way back to herself.

Rain retrieved the pen from the ground and pressed its tip against the paper, the shape of a letter appeared under her hand. Her lips curved into a faint smile.

Thinking about two eyes as blue as the ocean, Rain started writing.

**Author's Note:**

> In Italy we say “chi non muore si rivede” (aka who doesn’t die, will appear again kinda) which means “long time no see”, because after two months, I’m back with my sad bullshit. OHSY disappointed me so much that I felt the need to write my own version of what happened. I’m a fool who likes to stick to canon, so this isn’t a rewrite, it’s kinda a missing moment where I’m trying to explain why Ethan and MC seemed so distant in the last couple of chapters. I hope I gave them justice! And If the ispiration won’t leave me again, I promise I’ll write two other parts more happy and fluffy (I swear, I can’t trust my own words ksjdfjhdkhf).


End file.
